Betrayal

I have a rather intense feeling of betrayal at the moment; and so I'm going to blog about it for lack of any better way to vent my frustrations.

I officially started classes again on Wednesday. I have only one class, and that's a good thing because I'm going to need to do some serious studying for this class. It's actually something I don't know much about. ACCOUNTING! Not the most attractive aspect of the business world, imo, but a necessary one.

Like I said, class officially started Wednesday, but I dug around and found our first assignment and started my reading on Monday. I feel less guilty about that (the digging, not the reading), because the link was up and ready by the time I checked back that same day. So, I started early and it's a good thing, because I learned from the first chapter that almost everything I thought I knew about accounting was wrong. Granted, my view of accounting was basically people "crunching" numbers concerning other people's money (something I definitely didn't want to do), which was right. It's just what that "crunching" entails that I had over-simplified to a great degree. Accounting is a challenging field, and probably wouldn't be boring for someone who cared more about numbers than I.

However, the betrayal comes in when I get to my assignment. See, I read my two chapters, I made flash cards, re-read them, took notes, did most of the review material at the end of the chapters, went through the "lectures" (PowerPoint presentations) twice, and took notes on them...basically, I studied a lot more than I usually have to do.

And I went to do the assignment...

A good third of it was totally foreign to me. The instructor gave some tips and clues imbedded in the assignment itself, but still. I figure that if I'm asked to do an assignment, then I should have had the opportunity (and the directions to do so) to have learned the material in advance. I mean, that seems like common sense, right? But that isn't the worst of it.

After doing the assignment, and writing a complaint to the teacher along with my submission, I decided, what the heck, I'd take the quiz. Now, for myself, I think using notes, hand-outs, and looking in the textbook is cheating. I don't care if it's "allowed," which it is at Herzing; I just don't see the point of taking a test if you're going to be using materials other than your own brain to "prove" you learned something.

In that sense, I had to "cheat" on the test, because it was all material that we hadn't learned, i.e. been directed to study and been taught in the "lectures." To say I'm pissed is a bit of an understatement at this point. The consolation that I got all the questions right because I found out that the material we had not studied, as per our reading and lectures, was all in the review hand-outs I happened to read before I took the quiz (but only after I turned in the homework). I mean, how is it review, if you haven't actually viewed it the first time yet.

Well, anyway, it's done now. I worked my way through an assignment that required me to know things I hadn't been taught and I took a stupid test that doesn't prove anything other than the fact that I know how to read a hand-out written up in Excel. Now, I have my weekend free to get caught up on other things...again.